UTS University of Technology, Sydney - DAB Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building

A studio / laboratory / workshop to facilitate research and design of interfaces,
instruments, and interactive environments

The Interactivation Studio is a flexible reconfigurable lab space and infrastructure, facilitating multiple scenarios of use (teaching, researching, performing, playing, workshop). The research and design focuses on the interaction between people and technological environment, developing new interface prototypes and demonstrating new ways of interacting with computer environments. Such environments, or electronic ecologies (the idea of an e-cology emphasises the two way nature of interactions), can exist from the intimate scale (musical instruments, wearable interfaces, personal area networks, handheld networked devices), on the desktop, to the spatial scale of rooms and buildings (interactive architectures). The research approach of the Interactivation Studio is deliberately hands-on, mixing practical experiments with theoretical frameworks, developing in an iterative way in order to include everyone.

As part of Sydney Design festival the Studio will be open to the public from Monday 3 August to Friday 14 August (12-5pm), with demonstrations and hands-on experimental set-ups made by Alejandra Mery Keitel, Jason McDermott, Amy Yi-Chun Chen, Frank Maguire, Jos Mulder, and Bert Bongers.

On Friday 7 August we will create interactive projections on the big curved ceiling inside the Powerhouse building in the main foyer, as part of the Play Late event.

In 2008, we had the Open Studio events from 11-15 August. A week long introduction to the Studio and its research aims, approaches, history, ideas, infrastructure etc., through installations, hands-on demonstrations of inspirations for new ways of interacting with our electronic environment.